September 2010 Archives

Sep

The New HTC EVO 4G 3.29.561.5 Update Already Rooted

Posted by Brad Ganley in EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, Mods, News

Earlier, HTC and Sprint announced that they would be rolling out an update for the EVO 4G to fix some issues. Very shortly after the announcement (not the update itself, which literally went live 30 minutes ago, but the announcement of it, mind you), a rooted version of said update was released by the insane, caffeine fueled developers at XDA. Normally, after an update such as this you would have to wait for some kind dev to root the update or take advantage of Unrevoked Forever. Apparently, though, the Android community was ahead of HTC themselves in releasing the OTA update.

Sep

T-Mobile Teases Online Pre-Orders For G2 : Coming Soon

Posted by Brian O'Toole in G2 (Vision), News, T-Mobile

While there have been several third party retailers already grabbing headlines with pre-orders of the T-Mobile G2, T-Mo themselves have been keeping mum about when the phone will go up for sale. Well, several T-Mobile customers have been reporting today that the G2 has appeared in their online store with an enticing label: “Pre-ordering starts soon!”

While this is no concrete date, it’s still enough to set vanilla Froyo fanboys’ hearts aflutter, despite the continued lack of an official release date for the G2 (don’t give up hope, guys).

Lest we forget in all the excitement: RadioShack are already advertising the G2 for $50 off the expected contract price, and Best Buy is offering it for $200 on contract.

Sep

Updates For HTC EVO 4G And Hero Now Rolling Out, Bug Fixes Abound

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in EVO 4G (Supersonic), Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, News

Thought the Fascinate was the only device getting a ~~super exciting~~ bug-fixing update today? Wrong!

As it turns out, Sprint's just decided to push out updates to not one, but two devices: the infamous HTC EVO 4G, and its slightly older brother, the Hero. The former of those two devices is, according to Sprint's official changelog, getting an update that fixes an issue with multiple GMail Account syncing as well as an issue with calendar event editing... and nothing else.

However, Engadget has managed to grab a screen shot from an internal Sprint document that also acknowledges fixes of that pesky 30 frame per second cap and an issue with the GPS rebooting.

Sep

Dell Streak Headed To Best Buy While Its 7-Inch Brethren Gets Teased (Could This Be The Looking Glass?)

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Dell, Looking Glass, News, Streak

Ever since the Dell Streak launched with Android 1.6, the company has been making desperate attempts to bring the 5-inch tablet/phone hybrid into the eyes of the public, but somehow, the public just hasn't noticed yet (even releasing the source code didn't help).

Dell's latest attempt at stardom? Making the Streak available from Best Buy. No word on that long overdue update to FroYo, lowering that sky-high price tag, or even that leaked update to Eclair, but hey - at least now you can get it from a location where all employees are dressed in blue, right?

Sep

New Survey Says Consumers Want Tablets, Android Has High Brand Loyalty But Low Brand Recognition, And Bigger Is Better

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Devices By Manufacturer, News

Sybase (owned by SAP) commissioned a survey on tablets, and the results are rather surprising. Before I dig in, however, I feel it's only fair to point out what I perceive as a flaw in the survey: they provide minimal information on the survey questions and how it was conducted. As a result, it's hard to tell whether the survey was free of bias; based on how the results are presented with bias, I'm guessing not.

That said, Sybase made a spokesperson available to talk about the results, and I'm sure they could clarify things (or pull the wool over my eyes - I'm a sucker for slick talk).

Sep

Motorola Droid 2 World Edition May Have 1.2 GHz CPU, Hit Quadrant Score Of 1709

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Droid 2, Droid 2 Global, News, Verizon Wireless

Just over a month ago (before it launched), the Quadrant scores of the Motorola Droid 2 leaked. We called it a monster when it hit 1,458. Today, Droid-Life has scored a few more leaked benchmarks, this time of the Droid 2 World Edition (which is rumored to be replacing the D2). The results: a Quadrant score of 1709 thanks to a CPU clocked at 1.2 GHz. For perspective, keep in mind that a stock EVO manages around 1100.

Just a note: the first Quadrant run yielded a score of 1566, while the second hit 1709. I'd guess the score on the screenshot above was a new set of runs, as it seems like an uncached score.

Sep

Verizon Releases Manual, Minor Update For Samsung Fascinate

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Fascinate, News, Verizon Wireless

While not nearly as big a deal as the Froyo rollout for the Droid X, Verizon is also releasing an update for the Samsung Fascinate today. Doesn't look like users will receive a notification for the update quite yet, so to get it you'll need to check for it manually.

The changes:

Instant notification of Visual Voice Mail messages on your messaging bar.
Improved syncing between your phone and email accounts.
Prompt notification when switching to Airplane mode.
Faster switching to 3G services from 1x.
Easily search your phone during calls.
Improved Enterprise Exchange password alerts.
No Service audio alert removed.

Sep

[How-To] Root Your Motorola Droid X Running Android 2.2 Froyo

Posted by Brad Ganley in Droid X (Shadow), Froyo 2.2, Mods, News

This article deals with rooting your Android phone. If you’re unfamiliar with this term, hit up our primer here: Rooting Explained + Top 5 Benefits Of Rooting

If you installed the Froyo OTA update this morning on your Droid X and lost root, fear not! The Droid 2 root method works swimmingly with the Droid X update and is a painless as painless can be.

Stephen Bird (AKA birdman), of Droid X custom ROM fame, posted this tweet not 12 hours ago:

The link in the tweet points to this page at XDA Developers which provides a one-click root for the Droid 2.

Sep

T-Mobile UK Confirms Samsung Galaxy S Froyo Update Will Roll Out Before The End Of September, Will Be Windows Only

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Froyo 2.2, Galaxy S, News, Samsung, T-Mobile

T-Mobile UK is on a roll - HTC Desire Froyo update has been rolling out for a few days now, and today a mod at the same official T-Mo forum confirmed that a whole truckload of frozen goodness is coming to the Galaxy S owners as well:

Hi there,
We are pleased to announce that there will be a software update for the Samsung Galaxy S at the end of the month. This will update your phone software to Android 2.2 and will be available through the Samsung Kies PC application.
Regards
Stef
Forum Team

If you rewind your memory to the end of July, you may remember this tweet by SamsungMobileUK promising an end of September Froyo for all Galaxy S handsets:

Very nice to see at least 1 network is coordinated enough to follow up on the promise.

Sep

Froyo Update Officially Rolling Out For Motorola Droid X

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Android OS, Droid X (Shadow), Froyo 2.2, News, Verizon Wireless

We had a pretty good idea it was coming, and now it's here: Verizon has started rollout of the Android 2.2 update for the Droid X. As usual, some users are already receiving notification that an update is available, but if you don't want to wait, you can always check for the update manually.

Obviously, the most major change comes from updating Android itself. However, it looks like Verizon has also made a few other tweaks while it was at it. Full slide (same one from yesterday):